Not with a bit of data processing. With one tower they can figure out how far away you are. They can track that over time and cross reference that with road layouts when you are moving at highway speeds. Knowing the signal will appear to slow down when you are moving parallel to the cell tower and faster when you are travelling towards or away. Modern antenna designs are also reasonably directional with a tower having banks that point out to cover different quadrants. They know what bank of antennas is facing you.
Apple made a good step in iOS 26.3 to limit at least one vector of mass surveillance, enabled by having full control of the modem silicon and firmware. They must now allow users to disable GNSS location responses to mobile carriers, and notify the user when such attempts are made to their device.
It seems like the vendor can disable this leak. If we ever get a well-rounded linux OS phone, I imagine this will be moot for those on that platform.
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Carriers are laughing in cellular triangulation
we're safe from that particular method here in the boonies. we're lucky to even have one tower from any provider within range anywhere around here.
Not with a bit of data processing. With one tower they can figure out how far away you are. They can track that over time and cross reference that with road layouts when you are moving at highway speeds. Knowing the signal will appear to slow down when you are moving parallel to the cell tower and faster when you are travelling towards or away. Modern antenna designs are also reasonably directional with a tower having banks that point out to cover different quadrants. They know what bank of antennas is facing you.
mobile carriers don't need GPS to get your location.
Still creepy that they can just get your phone to tell it to turn though.
It seems like the vendor can disable this leak. If we ever get a well-rounded linux OS phone, I imagine this will be moot for those on that platform.
That's a big 'if', and one I desperately want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E2LvCgh1U&t=1s
Is the article anything beyond iOS advertisment?